Clutch Recommendations for Daily Driving

Make sure you get the correct dowel pins and and pressure plate bolts for the 11" clutch and a Motorcraft throwout bearing. It's worth spending a little extra now, you don't want to do it twice...

I have been running a Luk RepSet clutch, PN L07042 for 2.5 years. I had it on a turned stock flywheel and now I have it on a Fidanza aluminum flywheel. It has a very nice feel and has held up well to many many autocross runs on sticky tires. It is impossible to beat for $78 on Rock Auto.

Spec

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I appreciated everyone's advice and I know people appreciate follow up. A new clutch is in and so far everything is great. Here's what I ended up going with:

1. Clutch - LUK RepSet (07042) from Rock Auto
2. Clutch Cable - Kept OEM, no change
3. Throwout & Pilot bearings - Used the bearings from the LUK Clutch Kit
4. Clutch Fork - Ford OEM Fork from CJ Pony Parts
5. Pivot Ball - Ford OEM Pivot from CJ Pony Parts
6. Rear Main Seal - Ford OEM seal from CJ Pony Parts
7. Consider: Mid Pipes + Cat Back - BBK O/R H-Pipe w/ all new Ford OEM Oxygen Sensors, stock cat back
8. Tranny Fluid - Motorcraft Mercon V

I'm about 300 miles into breaking in the new clutch. The clutch feel is much lighter than the worn OEM clutch so it's great for daily driving. I seriously considered going to a higher performance/quality clutch, but I am happy with the direction I went. The TO bearing noise is gone. My main complaint is every once in awhile at the very top end of the clutch I get almost a ticking sheet metal noise. I figured I'd get the first 500 miles into the clutch break in and then see if I can figure it out. If anyone has any insight on this that would be great.

The H-Pipe with the stock catback is one of the prettiest noises I've ever heard. Can't help but smile every time I start the car up! Definitely happy I made that change.

Some follow up questions:

1. Now that I have aftermarket exhaust I know I need a tune to smooth out idle and hopefully rid myself of the CELs - are there any current recommendations for reputable places that will do a mail-order SCT tune? There's a shop in town that will sell me an SCT + Tune for ~$800, but I as my modifications are very light (only the mid pipe), I was hoping to save some $ by buying the SCT tuner separately and then ordering a custom tune. Is that possible or am I looking at this backwards?

Again - thanks everyone for the help as I was getting this figured out!

www.tuningbyjames.com for a good mail order tune. He did my car which was a whole engine swap. Pick up a cheap unmarried SCT X3 tuner for like $75 and get him to burn you a tune for it. You will want to take that H pipe off and take it to a shop and have a wideband bung welded in tho. No good remote tuner is going to be able to do a good job without a wideband.

On my '98 Cobra, I have a Promotion Powertrain built T-45 with a 23 spline input shaft and Carbon fiber 03-04 Cobra Synchros Kit. It is rated to 700HP. I got it back in '06 when I was literally on one of the "I want the best" kicks. As other's have stated, in NA Form, I would never need that amount of power handling, so over the years I have had a bullet-proof tranny, which is overkill but alas has never given me a problem. I have a Fidanza Aluminum Flywheel, Ford Racing Aluminum Driveshaft, and Promotion's "Yellow Clutch" with a Steeda cable and Promotion quick release quadrant. All I can say is, I am late to the party but glad you went with a much less robust setup. Between the "yellow clutch" and the quick release quadrant the pedal effort was extreme. I work out with a trainer and he trains my legs pretty hard, but I literally felt my left knee for days when I drove this car out and about with the above clutch setup. Again, I wanted the best and strongest clutch and can't blame them for selling it to me, but it was a workout in and of itself, so good for you for not going into "overkill mode" like I did.

My main complaint is every once in awhile at the very top end of the clutch I get almost a ticking sheet metal noise.

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This sounds like the clutch fingers hitting the collar around the transmission input shaft. Some clutches are known to have interference here and the collar needs to be shortened. if this is the case, you may need to tweak the height of the pivot bearing too in order to have the proper swing.

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While it wasn't cheap ($800), I absolutely love my McLeod dual disk clutch in my '94 Cobra.

The clutch is rated at 800 HP. A massive overkill for my all factory 5.0.

The car still has the factory cable and quadrant. However, with the dual disk, the pedal pressure is about 1/2 that of the factory clutch, which is why I went with this clutch in the first place. Being an organic clutch material it engages very smoothly.

Given the lower pedal pressure, the factory cable and quadrant just might last forever.

Aftermarket quadrants and cables have been a PITA in my opinion. The manually adjusted quadrants need tweaking all the time and the cables don't last anywhere near as long as the Ford cables. Unfortunately, the Ford cables are getting hard to find and the quadrants are long gone. When the cables are no longer available, I'll probably convert to hydraulic.